


People Lived Here

by Pandean



Series: Liminal Beings [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arya-centric, Babies, Gen, Memories, POV Arya Stark, Post-Canon, Queen in the North, Sansa Stark is Queen in the North, Sansa-centric, Stark Siblings - Freeform, Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:31:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandean/pseuds/Pandean
Summary: Winter still settles across the land despite the Great War being over. Many dear friends, lovers, and allies are dead. Sansa Stark, the newly crowned Queen in the North, reflects about her life and family in Winterfell's Crypts. Pregnant herself, she wonders what her child's childhood will be and more importantly if she can be  good mother after all she's been through.Arya comes by and they find both their rose-tinted glasses turned on their beloved family, fading.





	People Lived Here

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I wanted to write this for a number of reasons. Main reason is that I think the childhoods of the Stark children, especially Sansa and Arya, were very problematic for a number of reasons. Let's face it, neither parent did the best job with them. The past is gone though and now Arya and Sansa must reconcile to the fact that they're family is not perfect as well as the changes they made to themselves.

The entire castle of Winterfell was buzzing with activity as guards and pages ran everywhere. There were rough shouts and the neigh of frightened horses with the men of Winterfell all working themselves up more than a maiden on her wedding day. Well, except one. Arya still wasn't sure about the new man in her sister's life. Could he even be considered new at this point? He'd been here over two years as part of an injured battalion forced to take sanctuary inside Winterfell for the rest of the War. That had been the turning point, Arya remembered. Something then had changed the tides and the side of the living won.

 

She wasn't sure how and so she didn't tend to dwell on it.

 

She slipped aside the man leaning against the wall, also watching the scurrying castlemembers in their wake. He eyed Arya critically and she couldn't help but suppress a chill. Those eyes reminded her of the eyes she'd shut forever, the eyes haunting and watching her as she stole the masks in the Hall of Faces, the eyes that Jaqen and the Waif had. Always vigilant. Always watching.

 

"When are you going to tell them?" he asked, a hint of an accent to his voice. Once, when she was No One, Arya could tell the exact region he was from with just a sentence. But now, she avoided No One. It was still inside her, some sinister type of force, a wild personality begging control. But it wouldn't get free--wouldn't get what she cared about or loved if she ignored it. So, the masks fell and were buried somewhere in the Godswood and No One was officially dead.

 

It kind of sucked, to be honest. She'd liked the power it gave her. Not only for revenge against her enemies but protection for her allies. But Arya had never been meant for the House of Black and White.

 

"Maybe in a few more minutes. Are they worrying about Sansa again?"

 

He gave a tight nod.

 

"That's dumb. They have to know where she goes by now at this time of the day."

 

"Perhaps you should make sure she's alright," he said. "And I'll get these people settled down."

 

Arya was about to protest---SHE was of Winterfell and those were HER people, plus she wasn't the one who'd gotten Sansa pregnant in the first place. But she bit her tongue, for once swallowing the spitfire that dared to consume her whole. Then again, the crypts were a place for a Stark. Not some Wildling man who currently was the paramour of the Queen in the North. It's surprised her, initially, when she found out her Queenly sister wasn't going to marry him. But it made sense now. Sansa had been through much and much of it was trauma--maybe different from her own trauma--but still trauma. In the end, the Northern Lords followed Sansa and any child of hers would be just as Stark as her. 

 

She made her way down to the crypts, relishing the smells of dampness, the growing moss and mold that had crept up recently. It meant the thaw was beginning, according to Sam (she refused to call him Maester Samwell) but Gilly was more cautious about it. Some Wildling superstition of not getting overjoyed when a thaw begins as Winter was sneaky and could trick you. It was weird. But hey, at least their kid actually had a name now. 

 

The darkness of the crypts was an old friend to Arya. It'd shielded her when she was a child, feeling misunderstood and belittled, it was the place she played with Bran and Robb, scaring Sansa into crying for her mother. That memory made her burn a bit with secondhand embarrassment. But it wasn't like she could change the past. But still, the darkness was a comfort, more than any wolf pelt or cloak, more than any food or drink, more than anybody at all. Why, she did not know. Maybe that dark part of her--the part that had been No One--wasn't truly dead yet. Maybe it thrived off the darkness. 

 

But there was a flicker down the hall and Arya sped up her pace. She'd grown so much in the past two years that she was nearly of a height of some of the shorter men in the castle. Of course, Sansa was taller, but she was a graceful type of tall. Not the sinewy and lean type of tall that she was. But either way it made her steps longer, making it a short distance before she came upon her sister's still form.

 

Sansa was wrapped in a thick woolen dress, as much to keep the chill away as to try to hide her now very prominent baby bump, and her hair was done in a simple northern style with a single braid across her shoulder. The lack of sunlight due to the Second Long Night and the Winter after had left her ivory skin the color of pure snow, pale as a weirwood. Her red head only made the comparison more accurate and her steely blue eyes--always so steely, never as joyful or innocent as they were when she was a child--were reminiscent of the hot springs in the Godswood. 

 

Arya heard others sometimes whisper to each other than Sansa was the Ice Queen, with a frozen heart. Others mentioned called her the Red Wolf, for the color of her hair and the blood she spilled in order to take back Winterfell and keep her family safe. But there was another name for her, one that Arya thought privately to herself as she would never speak it out loud. The Mourning Wolf. For her sister was always perpetually in mourning. Not in the traditional way--no, she did not wear any type of black mourning clothes or cry into her pillow at night. But she was mourning.

 

For their childhoods that never were and should have been, for their family gone from this world, for Jon and his heroic end that had saved them from defeat, for the loves she could've felt and the lives she could've lived, and not only for herself, but also Arya, the other remaining Stark. For the different paths of fate that every single one of them could have followed to a better ending. For the millions of unnamed people who perished during the Second Long Night. For the wolf that died when she was a child and even for the dead dragon queen whom Sansa had disliked. 

 

She took the mourning of others in pain and made it her own, channeled into it making the present as well and grand as it could be, as warm and inviting and safe, all while still carrying the mourning of others on her shoulders like she was holding up the sky. 

 

Arya was not....good, in regards to emotions. Being No One meant being emotionless and when she did show emotion it tended to be in fiery spats of rage and anger. Never something super productive. But who could blame her with teachers like the Hound and Jaqen? But she still wished she could take part of the sky from her sister just to ease the burden of it.

 

But then again, she'd never been good at shoulder burdens, at just bearing them without hate or spite, in the first place.

 

Finally she came up upon her sister, gazing at the statue of their father. They'd finally found someone who could make a decent one and by their combined descriptions they got it right. Though it was not traditional, they'd also comissioned statues of Catelyn, Bran, Rickon, Robb, and Jon. And they stood in a row near the end of the hall, swords across the laps of the men, a pair of knitting needles across Catelyn's, guarding against the outside. 

 

Sansa was looking up at her father with a queer look in her eye and a hand on her growing belly. Normally Arya's sister managed to keep her face blank enough for most to not be able to read but even though she'd let go of the Faceless Men's teachings and skills, Arya could always read her sister.

 

"What are you thinking about," she asked, her voice breaking the stone cold silence of the crypts.

 

Sansa jumped slightly--another thing that she'd picked up from her past; the old Sansa never was jumpy, was always perfectly composed--but recovered from her shock quickly and turned to Arya. She shook her head slightly before turning back to the statue of their father. "You'll hate it."

 

Arya sighed and pushed her back upon the closest wall and slid down until she was seated on the ground. "Well, I'm not leaving until I hear it. Everyone upstairs is going crazy over you missing. You'd think they'd get it by now. I'm not sure how long Askeladden plans on watching the chaos before stepping in himself. I think it amuses him."

 

A ghost of a smile flickered on Sansa's lips. "Yes, that is definitely something he would do."

 

"So, what's on your mind?" 

 

Sansa sighed. "Are you sure you really want to hear it."

 

Arya rolled her eyes. "Well, duh."

 

Sansa's smile grew a little bigger before fading again. "I was just thinking. About our parents. And me--being a parent soon." She rubbed her stomach fondly. "I tried to talk to Maester Samwell but he didn't quite understand what I was getting at and explained the likelihood of anything going wrong during the pregnancy was low due to how well mother carried children. But that's not what I'm bothered about."

 

"What are you bothered about?" Damn, Arya loved her sister. Loved her more than she loved many things (Oh if someone had told a nine year old Arya that she'd have killed them on the spot) but it always took way too long to get inside her head and hear what she needed to say.

 

"Where they really that great?" Sansa asked and this time it was Arya's turn to be surprised. "I mean, I love Father, I love Mother. They were good people. But, the more I've thought about what I'd want to be as a parent the more I can only think...not like them. I can't be like them. I loved them, dearly, but I've also come to terms with something. I know Father loved me dearly, but I also know he didn't understand me, he didn't particularly feel as comfortable around me as he did you. He didn't know who I was or take the chance to find out, didn't trust me enough to tell me that we were in a dangerous place back in King's Landing. He gave me a doll to replace Lady and that was it--no mind that I hadn't played with them in five years. I know he loved me. But not truly enough. Not like he did you. The more I think about it, the more I see my childhood nastiness--which I can never stop apologizing for--was directed towards you because I was so jealous. I wanted a relationship like that with him. But it didn't happen."

 

Arya slowly nodded. Gods, is this what Sansa think she'd hate her for? Arya loved her Father and her Mother but they were flawed human beings. Fuck, if she looked back on it she could see that Sansa definitely was in her right to think such thoughts. "You're not a bad person for thinking that. It wasn't like Mother was stellar either. We were sheltered. I felt the same way with her that you did with Father. But she wasn't a bad person. She loved us. But it doesn't excuse the stuff she did that hurt us."

 

"And Jon," Sansa added.

 

"And Jon," Arya nodded.

 

There was silence for a little while as both Stark women stood there, listening to the drip of water on the rocks. "You're going to be a good mother, Sansa." she finally said. "You're going to be one of the best mothers. You're going to teach your child what they need to know, your child is going to have both a mother and father who love them and understand them, and an aunt too, at that. Do you want to know how I know that?"

 

Sansa's gaze finally left their father's statue and turned to hers. "How do you know?"

 

"Because you made Winterfell into a place where people lived again. I mean, I'm not saying you did everything. Jon fought battles, I helped with Littlefinger and fought with Jon in the War for Dawn. We did a lot in other ways but neither of us are what you'd call homemakers. But you made the Great Hall into a field hospital and you shared your food and supplies, everything you had, without even blinking. While other men may have rebuild the walls of the castle, it was you who they were building for. Because they believed in you. You made this place a haven for those orphaned during the war, or the young single women needing work desperately, you took the taint the Boltons put to this place and washed it away. I remember coming back to Winterfell. It was like a living in a castle full of ghosts--not just of the dead people variety."

 

Arya smiled softly at her sister. "In hundreds of years when we're all gone, you're the reason why they will say people lived here."


End file.
